Disney Kills Jerry Bruckheimer’s WWII Flick Killing Rommel

I have yet to read Steven Pressfield’s “Killing Rommel”, though I do have it on my reading list, somewhere between finishing “Point of Impact”, trying to slog my way through the first 100 pages of Justin Cronin’s monstrous “The Passage”, and starting on those Lee Child Jack Reacher novels that I’ve heard so much about. I was hoping to get “Rommel” done before the movie version from producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney came out, and now it looks like I might get that chance, because according to Deadline, Disney has all but killed Bruckheimer’s adaptation of the Pressfield novel.

While he’s off in Hawaii shooting Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Bruckheimer just had a high-profile WWII project killed by Rich Ross because it didn’t fit the studio’s family-friendly franchise mandate. Though Bruckheimer put two years of work into it, Disney has jettisoned an adaptation of the Steven Pressfield historical novel Killing Rommel.

Bummer.

But if Bruckheimer wants to get this done badly enough, he shouldn’t have too much trouble taking it to another studio. Which might have been the best route to take in the first place, since at this point it seems Disney only cares about creating, maintaining, and continuing with movie franchises.

“Killing Rommel” is the tale of a daring attempt by a British battalion to capture German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, aka The Desert Fox, during World War II, at a time when Rommel’s Panzer tanks were rolling through Africa and making mincemeat of the Brits.